


The Truth Untold

by draculard



Category: Strange Meeting - Susan Hill
Genre: Angst, Canon-Era, M/M, Mutual Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 17:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21479920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: "Alright?" Hilliard asks."Alright," says Barton, and pulls away.
Relationships: John Hilliard/David Barton
Kudos: 7





	The Truth Untold

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Wilfred Owen's poem, Strange Meeting.

Dizziness buzzes into his head as soon as he stands up and he reaches out blindly, his hand grappling for Hilliard’s shoulder. It’s dehydration, he knows. What he wouldn’t give for water in the morning rather than rum — but rum keeps and water doesn’t, so there’s no use wishing.

When his vision clears, he blinks at Hilliard and watches the rain drip from Hilliard’s hat onto his lips, his eyelashes, the bridge of his nose. Hilliard’s eyebrows quirk; his mouth turns up in a questioning smile.

Barton’s hand is still on his shoulder.

“Alright?” Hilliard asks.

“Alright,” Barton says, and pulls away. 

It wouldn’t do for the men to see them like this, Hilliard would say, leaning on each other for support. Though really, it’s the adjutant who would notice, not the men. He seems to mark everything about Hilliard and Barton with disapproval; a friendship between two officers seems as distasteful to him as one between an English soldier and a Jerry.

With his back to Hilliard, Barton cups his hand and lets the raindrops drum against his palms until they make a little muddy-looking pool. It tastes no worse than the chlorine-flavored filth in their canteens. He thinks of the little drops clinging to Hilliard’s bottom lip and swallows. 

Tastes fine, he tells himself, tastes fine.

But he can’t help thinking there’s something that would taste better.

* * *

“You can leave the light on,” Hilliard whispers. “I can sleep through anything.”

But the candle goes out anyway when the first shell of the night hits. It doesn’t matter. Barton hasn’t been reading so much as he’s been staring blankly at the page, letting the words run together in one indecipherable blur. He’s hyper-aware of Hilliard’s presence behind him, huddled under a mud-stained Army blanket, still wet, still cold from today’s rain.

Two blankets are better than one, Barton thinks, but that’s something he doesn’t dare suggest. It would be like an assault on Hilliard’s undefended castle — welcome, perhaps, but an assault nonetheless. In Barton’s head, he has a perfect image of Hilliard waiting, all alone, in a fortress made of meticulously-laid stone and mortar and decorated in all the trappings of a proper English country home. The way his mother would decorate it. The way his father would insist a castle must look. 

Barton slips into his own bunk silently and glances at Hilliard, asleep across the way. Only the very top of his head is visible beneath the blankets, his hair grown past military regulation and mussed from being under a cap all day. It’s curly when it’s long; there’s no moonlight to illuminate the color, but Barton knows it’s a chestnut brown, just like the horse Hilliard rode on their long march here.

Another shell hits — just outside the trenches, just far enough away not to bother a soul. Barton shivers beneath his blanket. His clothes still stick to him, damp and chill, and his blanket is no better.

He prays the rain will stop tomorrow. Across from him, Hilliard shifts in his sleep and one hand falls over the edge of his bunk, freed from the blanket, pale and dirty and calloused. 

He’ll get cold like that, Barton thinks. His own hands are covered in chilblains — little red spots line his fingers, hard to the touch and sweetly painful when anything brushes against them. Hilliard says, whenever he spots Barton rubbing them, that they’ll turn into frostbite as the temperature drops. Hilliard says you shouldn’t pray for the rain to end, because then the ground freezes and everything just gets worse.

But it won’t be all that bad, Barton knows, as long as Hilliard stays.

He reaches out as far as he can. His fingertips brush Hilliard’s hand and he can feel the roughness of Hilliard’s palm, his chapped, bleeding knuckles, the blackness of his ragged fingernails — some bruised, some merely dirty. Hilliard’s fingers twitch against his and he feels the tenderness of his chilblains aching in response.

His hand is cold. Hilliard’s is, too. He thinks of all the girls he’s ever held hands with, how their palms fit into his, too small, too soft, but warm, and how his sisters would take his hand when they were cold and lace their fingers into his, how he’d shove their hands into his pockets when they forgot their gloves, and they would walk together through the snow like soldiers marching in rhythm to keep their hands from slipping.

Hidden beneath his blanket, still sleeping, Hilliard sighs.

Don’t wake up, Barton thinks. Don’t go.

But when the next shell hits just a few meters off from their dugout, he’s the one who pulls away.


End file.
